Let the Renovations Begin!

We now have a brown kitchen.  Well, technically, the color is macchiato.  Whatever.  It's of course an Italian name, has a modern Italian look, and was chosen by my half-Italian husband who would have no other color suggestions, thank you very much.

I like it, but it is very brown.  I'm trying to figure out how to accessorize like they do so effortlessly on those annoyingly addictive HGTV shows, and am currently googling how the heck to put curtains in an angled bay window without having that look ridiculous.  So far, no luck.  This morning's coffee run to the kitchen was a virtual obstacle course, with ladders, painter's tape, and a refrigerator rolled halfway into the room.  And the dust.  Oooooh, the dust.  The entire dust universe is having a party in our kitchen.

Ah, the joys of being a homeowner.  I'd never done any sort of painting before, and neither had Armando, save his still half-finished office wall.  Of course, before we could paint there was the matter of the grandmotherly blue floral wallpaper covering the entire kitchen.  Mind you, this is a big kitchen.  And we had ourselves some very stubborn wallpaper.  Luckily, a good friend of mine from DC has a very handy sister who lives in Albuquerque.  She came over armed with her tool set and a hearty work ethic and took me to Home Depot to buy all the necessary wallpaper-removal gear.  And then back to Home Depot to rent a steamer.  And then back again to return it all, as nothing had succeeded in removing the stuck-like-true-blue-wallpaper-glue.

After a full day of scraping and with our feet papered in little bits of wallpaper glue, we decided that the rest of it had virtually become part of the drywall and ergo we could treat it as such and just paint over the whole kaboodle.  My friend and her son (who hadn't realized what he'd signed up for) left for the evening, Armando made a solo trip back to the Home Depot -- btw, their security guards must get a good laugh when they see the same people coming back through those doors, more work-weary and desperate each subsequent time -- while I tried to reassure our Peanut that we weren't ignoring her because we planned to give her up for adoption after we drove ourselves insane with kitchen renovations.  After putting her to bed, we spent a good portion of the night patching, sanding and spackle-ing the walls.  And then, yesterday, we painted.  It beats me why they don't have painting classes at the Y, because it is a ridiculously good workout.  I'm so sore I practically dropped to the ground when I tried to get out of bed this morning.  My arms are so tired that I'm afraid to hold Anika for fear of dropping her.

And we're not done yet, as today we need to put on another coat and add an accent color in the dining area.  Then other small things, like new countertops, new cabinet hardware, new appliances (the fridge looks like the only cool kid at the playground compared to the rest of the gang) and new floors.  Hopefully it will all be done before Anika's tenth birthday.

The only other thing we've been doing, besides working, is watching futbol.  This has become one of Anika's new favorite pastimes, as it means Daddy Time.  When we first met, Armando and I talked about going to South Africa to watch some of these games in person.  Well, having a kid kind of nixed that dream.  But with a view like this, why would we want any other seats?

Here they are at a friend's house, watching the USA lose to Ghana.

And watching Paraguay lose to Spain.